Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Fanciest Moonshine Site Ever

Packing my bags today for a trip to Philadelphia for research, an interview on WHYY, visiting Rum Bar, and a family reunion. Since I’m generally known as Rowley, this reunion thing with a hundred or more Rowleys milling about may prove confusing, especially if whiskey is involved.

But before going offline for a few days, I’ll leave you with a link to one of the fanciest moonshine websites around: Ian Smiley’s L.S. Moonshine. Heads up that the site is in Chinese. Smiley, along with Mike McCaw, was on a panel with me at Tales of the Cocktail last year in which we discussed home distilling from historical and practical angles.

Smiley is also partner in a Huarong County (Hunan Province) distillery that provides Chinese drinkers with American-style corn whiskey, a taste some say compares favorably to bai jiu, a high-proof Chinese liquor that can be made from rice, sorghum, barley, or other grains. Production capacity is 90,000 liters per year.

Haven’t tasted any yet and I’m curious to get my hands on some. So far, LS Moonshine is not imported to the US, but with a growing appreciation of unaged spirits (i.e., white dog), we should be seeing increasing examples of similar raw spirits on liquor store shelves.

Which brings me to a request: if anyone else is distilling corn whiskey these days, drop me a line, eh? I’m putting together a survey of commercial liquors made with 80-100% corn in the grain bill, regardless of where it’s made or whether it’s called corn whiskey or something else entirely.

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Rowley Who?

I'm a contributor to Whisky Advocate, contributing editor for Distiller magazine, a former board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and an erstwhile museum curator. After a life of living in bitterly cold and unspeakably hot places, I'm lucky enough to be working my tail off in southern California. Can't beat that with a stick.

Email me: moonshinearchives (at) gmail (dot) com

My day job is freelance writing for business, government, and academic clients. When I’m not helping others get their stories out, I’m eating and drinking, planning to eat and drink, or, relying on my training as an anthropologist and museum curator to reflect on what I’ve eaten and drunk. I travel whenever I can, visiting distillers, artisan food producers, secondhand bookstores, and farmers’ markets. Sometimes I manage to write about it here.